Ethan and Vita Murrow - THE WHALE presentation

Ethan and Vita Murrow visited for two days at Hollins University to celebrate the opening of their very first show of original graphite drawings from THE WHALE at The Eleanor D. Wilson Museum. It was wonderful to hear about the path of these fine artists and the process behind the making of the book. Vita's background is in film, Ethan's in fine art. Their skills have come together in dramatic representations Ethan portrays in graphite - life size!Or with sharpie pen - larger than life size!They shared how they developed the story behind THE WHALE.They hired actors to pose.Ethan uses woodless graphite pencils from Koh-i-noor in soft leads from 6 to 9B on 100 lbs. Lenox paper. He says it lays flat after being rolled and holds up well to the pencil. I was fascinated by the marks he made.You can get an idea of the size of the original drawings from the book next to the original drawing.They created their compositions much like I do - pulling the elements together in Phosothop.Then taking that to pencil.The results are stunning.

Seeing the originals was a serious treat.
What an honor to host the Murrows here at Hollins!